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Welcome to my teaching blog. I’ve taught at The Evergreen State College since 1997, gradually developing strategies of incorporating animation into the teaching of a variety of disciplines including fine arts, sciences, history and literature and media studies. For information about my personal creative work including films, flipbooks and other animation toys, please visit Random Motion. To view my films, go to my vimeo page.

If you are interested in applying for Mediaworks for 2014-15, applications are now available on the Mediaworks program blog.

In spring 2012, I co-taught “Animal Others in Image and Text” with Anne deMarcken. Working with Head of Instructional Media, Stephanie Zorn, and IT Specialist Amy Greene, we collaborated with students to create the eBestiary, a blog that compiled and presented each participant’s research and creative response to observations of animals during the quarter. In November, 2012, the eBestiary won the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium’s Award for Innovation in Educational Technologies. You can view a short documentary made for the awards presentation about the eBestiary below.

The best way to contact me is by email. I have office hours that change from quarter to quarter, so if you want to meet with me, it’s best to email me at least a week in advance.

My office from September 2011 to June 2014 is in Lab 2, 2266.

Information for students seeking contracts:

I prioritize contracts with students working in animation, students with whom I have worked in a previous program and students who contact me to initiate developing a contract by at least week five of the preceding quarter.

Individual Learning Contracts are not the place to begin learning animation. You need to have taken at least one quarter of college level animation before attempting an ILC that includes animation production.

Prerequisites for doing an animation ILC with me are one Evergreen interdisciplinary program (preferably two or more quarters) and junior or senior status.

I am usually available to take contracts in summer session.

Here are things you need to provide when requesting my support for your ILC:

A draft ILC that you’ve written after consulting with Advising and reading about ILCs on the Individual Learning Contracts web page. Make sure that the contract draft focuses on your learning goals, clearly separated from the activities you will undertake to achieve those goals.

A one page treatment for your project in which you discuss the underlying concepts and describe your stylistic and technical approaches, including whether or not you will use sound. You should explain why you want to express the concepts in those ways and make it clear how the form of the piece is related to its content. The treatment should also include an estimate of the total running time and a working title.

Pre-production and production schedules that outline all the steps you will take to complete the project, week by week. Include an estimate of how many hours per week you expect to devote to this project. Note that if you want to do a 16 credit contract, you should plan for a minimum of 40 hours per week of work.

A list of readings related to the work you expect to do. Some of these should be focused on the background of your idea, and at least one should consider other artists and animators who have also worked with this content, or theories about animation or media in general.